The formula of friendship
by TheGameMrsHudsonIsAfoot
Summary: Tony is egotistical, secretly a little needy and good god, have you heard how much the man talks about himself? While we're being honest though, Bruce, well, he has some issues of his own. Despite all that they are, and always will be, best friends.


**For FRS, for putting up with me. I'm no Tony Stark without my Bruce Banner. I love you man x**

* * *

**nine, ten, eleven...  
**  
"Kittens," They told him, "Or puppies, if you prefer."

It was always something innocent, something no one (in their right mind) could possibly object to.

Raindrops on roses and girls in white dresses. Think of a bright copper kettle whistling merrily on an open fire, a pair of warm woollen mittens on the mantlepiece and snowflakes falling outside the window in the midst of a silver white winter. Packages and string.

"Don't you," They asked with cloying enthusiasm, "Don't you just feel better already?"

And smiling, grinding his teeth so hard he couldn't help but wonder if this time he would succeed in crushing them into dust, he would answer, "You know, I can't tell you how much I hate that song."

Maybe next time he would wreak havoc on a theatre.

**twenty three, twenty four, twenty five...  
**_  
_"You know," They told him, "you aren't alone. A lot of people are going through exactly the same issues. They can help."

He doubted it.

"Doubt whom you will, but never yourself." They assured him with a false sense of enlightenment, fuelled by self-help books and spirituality, spun by an industry that thrived on inadequacy. "Find a support group."

And he figured, what the hell, he had been an optimist once before, well, everything.

They met in dusty church halls and abandoned store rooms all over the country, pouring out their hearts and laying themselves upon the mercy of strangers over cheap coffee and stale doughnuts.

Enter your cave.

Find your power animal.

Slide.

And during the one on one hug session he would squeeze his partner just a little too tightly, heart pounding in his throat, and the faceless Bob or Billie or Jimmy would pull away with a fear they didn't quite understand dawning on their faces.

**fifty six, fifty seven, fifty eight...**

"There are ways," They told him, "of dealing with your problem."

And sitting in a dingy waiting room or the back of a cab in traffic or a branch of a well-known coffee shop, a place of no real depth or character that could have been just about anywhere in the world, his hands would ball into fists in his pockets.

He had tried.

"Maybe," They would answer, and only the slightest flick of the eyes or catch in their voice would betray that they were afraid, not for him, but for their own wretched skin, "Maybe you should try counting to ten."

He would laugh, an abrupt dry bark that startled them, and answer.

"I've been counting for a long time."

**one hundred and eleven, one hundred and twelve, one hundred and thirteen...**

So he did what no self-respecting therapist, no best-selling self-help book, no self-important celebrity endorsement would tell him to do.

Over his morning coffee and a slice of toast he would peruse the papers for every story of pain and misery inflicted on the victims of a disenchanted age. Recession, knife-crime, broken families, gun culture, cancer, cold-blooded murder. With a side of eggs, please.

_(don't think about how they treated you_.)

Going about his daily business, he would watch the cars humming along the highway and wonder about fossil fuels and hydraulic fracturing and the depletion of the ozone layer and the never-ending damage these seemingly good men and women caused the world every day.

_(don't think about the life you'll never live.)_

__Staring at the ceiling as he lay in bed at night, he would imagine the life that must lay beyond the stars and the wars they would inevitably face as their technology changed and grew beyond their control. He didn't sleep well in those days.

_(don't think about the love you'll never find.)_

__It isn't what any shrink will tell you to do, but it works. As long as his nerves were singing, the blood was pounding in his ears and his heart was in his throat, he was safe.

As long as he was angry, he was in control.

So he stayed angry.

At least for a while.

Like an addict his tolerance started to build until the everyday rage wasn't enough. Every annoyance, the television upstairs thumping out game shows every day and night until his ceiling shook, the woman at the supermarket with dead eyes that shoved past him in line and set her kids wailing, the washing machine breaking down and flooding his kitchen floor until all he had to wear were those _god damn stretchy purple pants, _was almost enough to drive him into a frenzy.

So he left, and found the most out-of-the-way village in the most backwards area of the most uninhabitable country and put himself to work, on a journey to find inner peace. And even that, staring injustice in the face every single day, wasn't enough. And then he met Tony goddamn Stark.


End file.
